I have tried to be as
faithful to the original text as I can while rendering it into English so that Wumen will speak directly by his own words.Basically, translators have to choose
between, on the one hand, trying to make a work easily accessible to the reader
by conveying the author's meaning and, on the other, keeping as close as
possible to the author's original content to convey the writer's words.Sometimes this distinction is called
translating "thought-for-thought" or translating
"word-for-word."

Translating
thought-for-thought emphasizes what is called "dynamic equivalence" in
an attempt to translate the meaning, and it tends to focus on the
"intent" or "idea" of the author while translating sentence
by sentence, or paragraph by paragraph. The translation then expresses the
translator's view of the author's meaning in the new language in a way that not
only translates the words but attempts to find equivalent thoughts, meanings,
metaphors, and images in the new language for unique features and images found
in the original language. The idea is that the
translator does the cultural and literary work for the reader making the
reader's job easier.

This is a valid approach,
but one that I find wanting.I don't
like to read a translation that attempts to make the text familiar to English
readers by using English idioms for Chinese ones, and then to discover that the
Chinese idiom or metaphor is just as rich and not all that inaccessible as the
translator believed.As a reader, I like
to do the work of seeing the images in the original words rather than
translated into English or Western imagery. To me a translated text should feel
translated when I read it, and not read as if it were written by a contemporary
English writer.

My translation is generally
word-for-word, and I have attempted to have a translated English word or phrase
for every Chinese word or phrase.When
any special point of translation requires a decision, my bias is toward finding
the
"essentially literal" meaning of the original by translating by
the word, however I hope that I don't follow this rule of thumb slavishly and
that this translation has all the meaning as well as the color of the original.

The down side of the
word-for-word approach is that the reader may be confronted with some unusual
imagery or discussion that either doesn't seem intelligible at first or doesn't
flow in the text, but to me, as a reader, the extra work of the reader is more
than justified by the rewards of feeling that something has been learned and
seen from the eyes of the author that would be missing if translated "by
the idea" and not "by the word."Of course my goal is to avoid the extreme of this approach, one that
would maintain much of the Chinese syntax as well as idioms. An extreme example
could be called "Charlie Chan" English. (This is no criticism of the
Charlie Chan films, which I enjoy, but simply an example of the way that some
translations may go overboard in this direction.

Clearly every translation
necessarily includes some elements of the "word-for-word" and
"thought-for-thought" translation models, and the sincere translator
is adjusting the balance based on his or her feeling of what will provide the
best bridge to the author for the contemporary reader. This is the ongoing balancing
act and dilemma has been called "the trade-off between literal precision
and readability."Where he or she
finds the balance points in that trade-off is what makes the individual
translator have a unique style.

*

For
readers unfamiliar with the peculiarities, from the English point of view, of
Chinese, and older Chinese in particular, some additional notes may be helpful.The original manuscript has no numbering of
the cases, so numbers in all translations are added for the ease of the
reader.Also, though the three parts to
a case, the main case text, the comment by Wumen and
the verse by Wumen, are separated by breaks from each
other, there are no internal breaks for paragraphs within the main cases or
comments as is used in English, so all internal paragraph breaks are added by
the translators.Also, most of the
verses do not have line breaks and in those verses line breaks too are added.

Many English speakers are
surprised to learn that the old Chinese did not have any punctuation marks, so
all punctuation including periods, commas, quotation
marks, etc. are added by the translator's reading of the text.Thus, the same long string of Chinese
characters may be given different punctuation for commas, semicolons, and
periods by different translators.By
looking at the
original manuscript one appreciates this by seeing how the Japanese owners
or readers of the text inserted their own red ink interlinear notations.

From the AsianArt Museum
description of the manuscript:

"Notations in red ink to aid
in the reading of the text-such as grammatical markers (J. okototen),
pronunciation guides (J. shôten), and phonetic script
(J. kana)-were added by latter Japanese readers, making the work a valuable
source for studying the Japanese markings used to read Chinese and
Chinese-style (J. kanbun) texts."

Also surprising to most
English speakers is that Chinese doesn't have many of the characteristics of English
such as conjugation of verbs or different word endings for designating the
singular or the plural.Also, while
Chinese does have some pronouns, the language prefers to leave out pronouns in
most situations, so that the reader must read into the text whether, for
example, the pronoun "he", "you", or "one" is the
pronoun intended to be implied by the author. Thus different translations of
the Wumen Guan may read "you shouldn't look
back", "he shouldn't look back" or "one shouldn't look
back" depending on the translator's view of the implied meanings, because
the translator feels compelled in most cases to insert a proper pronoun.

The use of conjunctions is
another area that relies on implied context to a great extent.Two nouns or verbs may be used side by side
but the character for "and" may not be used because the speaker
expects that the reader will fill in the necessary implied conjunction.

This great amount of deliberately implied
meanings in the Chinese language is what I feel is largely responsible for the
stereotype of the inscrutable Chinese in Western cultural legend.

For proper names where the Chinese
pronunciations are retained, I'm including the English translation in
parentheses only the first time the name appears.A pronunciation guide for Chinese names in
Pinyin is at the end.The manuscript's pages are also not numbered,
but for comparing with the original manuscript, the page breaks in the
manuscript are indicated in the translation by [MM #] in brackets with #
indicating the number of the page that is beginning.

*

The WumenGuanor
Gateless Checkpoint is a truly unique text in the spiritual literature of the
world in that it expresses the simplicity, humor, and profundity of Zen in such
a concise record. While each case can legitimately be called a direct
revelation of the Truth, the Gateless Checkpoint challenges readers to inquire
within themselves to personally verify the living Truth of what each case
reveals, rather than merely to accept the stories as a static “revelation” of
truth to be enshrined and worshipped and set up as dogma.In Zen, revelation is not found in the past
but is alive right here and now. Knowing how to
distinguish "living words" from "dead words" is key to Zen, as the Chinese Zen master Baizhang
said over three centuries earlier.This
demand that the reader take up the responsibility to delve most intimately into
the living presence of the text is why the words and events appear to be so
puzzling to the uninitiated reader.

Zen
master Wumen was also a master of literary
suggestion, puns, and double entendre.It is my hope that by the new exposure of
this original manuscript, resulting in fresh translations such as this, new
generations will appreciate the joy and profundity with which Wumen presented Zen teaching.

*

This translation was
completed September 08, 2007, but of course some editing is ongoing.I readily admit that I am new to translating
Chinese and therefore I may have some quirky translations of certain words or
phrases.In completing this translation
I have consulted several prominent English translations, and in many instances
I have found that they disagree with each other, so I feel confident that my
translation is well within the center of the domain of legitimate translation.If the reader has questions about or
suggestions for improving my translations I do appreciate well intentioned
comments at Wonderwheel (at) pon.net]

[MM Cover
Page]

The Gateless Checkpoint of
the Zen Lineage

Complete

[MM 1]

To
say the Way is without a gate, in the end great numbers of people will be able to hold it and enter.To say the Way has a gate, does not flatter
the master and divides the younger brothers' (i.e.,
monks) unity.Alas, the forced
additions! Each appended note very much looks like a bamboo hat on top of a
bamboo hat and hardly necessary.Old
Man Xi (Learning) praises the willow.Furthermore, this
is crushing bamboo and twisting it to get the juice; you do not need these
gasps from going back and forth.Old Man Xi's one throw, one throw. Do not teach that one drop falls into rivers
and lakes.The piebald horse cannot
pursue a bird for a thousand li.

Xi Xaing (Lane of Learning) made public this harmful writing
on the last day of the seventh month of the beginning of the Shaoding (Stable Connection) Era [1228 C.E.].

[Untitled
Imperial Dedication]

On
the fifth day of the first month of the second year of the Shaoding
era, [1229] may you respectfully win the confidence of Heaven
on the occasion of your virtuous holiday.Your subject, monk Huikai, (Opening of Wisdom) on the fifth day of the twelfth month of last year [1228] prepared and printed picked up and arouse [MM2] caused these 48 criteria of the pivotal points of the
Buddhas and Ancestors.

I wish now for the prolonging of the
supreme Emperor's sacred personage for eternal prosperity.

Your highness, I respectfully wish
your virtue to be as brilliant as to equal the sun and moon.

May your profound importance, the
same as Heaven and Earth, be sung in the eight directions, and may your majesty
of speech be the joy of the four seas by effortless influence.

With
virtuous goodness to the merit of

Empress Ciyi
(Example of Compassion)

To propagate the Dharma,

Respectful words by

Your Subject Monk Huikai,

Former Abbot of Zen Temple Bao-Yin-You-Ci (Proclaiming the
Cause of Blessed Compassion)

[MM3]

The Gateless
Checkpoint of the Zen Lineage

The Heart-mind governs the
Buddha’s words; the gateless governs the lineage.Since the gate of the Dharma is gateless,
just how do you pass through alive? How do you not see the Way? Things that enter through the gate are not the family
treasures.Things that are obtained in
the beginning through conditions become destroyed in the end. Doesn’t a
big speech like this seem to raise waves without a wind, to gouge a wound in good flesh?Trying to solve the problem by such
cold-water stagnant words is comparable to shaking a stick to hit the
moon.The boot stands between an itch and
a scratch.To be happy mix with andford the stream.

I, Huikai,
in the summer of the year of the first Earthly Branch of the fifth Heavenly
Stem in the era of Shaoding [1228 C.E.],was head of the assembly at Longxiang
(Dragon-soaring) in Dongjia (Praise of the East). Because
I received requests to benefit others, I proceeded to go to the ancients’
public cases to make tiles to knock on their gates and, by following the
opportunities, to guide these learned persons.This was concluded and the record was transcribed. It became assembled
unconsciously; the first is not according to any express front to back
order.The forty-eight standards became
a collection to pass through called "The Gateless Checkpoint."

Indeed, it is a man not minding danger or dying who goes straight to
the point, and is not delayed by eight-armed Nezha.*Even if the Western Heaven’s “four sevens”
and the Eastern [MM 4] Earth’s
“two threes”** come to visit on the wind they are only able to beg for their
lives.If perhaps you vacillate, you
might as well be looking at a veiled window as someone rides a horse by, when
you are able to move away the obstruction and your eye returns, the horse has
passed by long ago.

The Ode says:

The Great
Way is gateless,

Yet it has a thousand differing paths;

Able to pass
through this checkpoint,

You stride alone
through Heaven and Earth.

[*
Eigth-armed Nezha is a
character from Chinese mythology who was originally a monster but in a later
human form became a loyal subject of the Jade Emperor, the ruler of
Heaven.His appearance is usually in the
disarming form of a charming youth, but like an unruly teenager he is known as
a trickster type who does not always perform his duties as expected.When needed for battle, Nezha
can instantly sprout his eight arms, and as he holds a weapon in each, he is
known for his ferocious fighting skills.

**The
Western Heaven’s “four sevens” are the 28 Zen ancestral founders of India, and
the Eastern Earth’s “two threes” are the six Zen ancestral founders of China.]

[For the individual Cases
1-48 in the body of the text click on the table of contents above.]

[Wumen’s
Untitled Afterword]

From on high, the Buddhas and ancestors let it hang
out to reveal their function according to the knocking, They tied together the
cases from the beginning without any leftover words being set up.They flipped
over their brain lids and revealed their eyeballs.All
people must agree to directly bend down to shoulder the responsibility; not
depending on another’s seeking.If you
correctly pass through the principle, you are a superior person finished with
learning; you lift up and manifest ordinary knowledge in the village
place.Knowing the gateless you can enter the door; also, without steps and
ranks, you can rise.Shaking your arms,
you pass through the checkpoint, not asking the checkpoint official.

How can it be that you do not see Xuansha’s (Black Sand) saying: “Gateless is
the gate of liberation; meaningless is the meaning of the person of the
Way”?

Also Baiyun
(White Cloud) said, “Clearly, those who only know the saying, what can they do?
[MM 62]Their penetration is not completely passing through.”

Even speaking in this way is red dirt cow’s milk.If you are able to penetrate the gateless
checkpoint, you early establish Wumen is dull.If you are not able to penetrate the gateless
checkpoint, also after all you fail to live up to yourself.So it is said, the heart-mind of Nirvana is
easy to know; the wisdom of differentiation is difficult to understand.When your understanding gains the wisdom of
differentiation your home, nation, and yourself are quiet and peaceful.

The
intitial change of the Shaoding
era [1228 C.E.], five
days before the untying of the regulations.

Following
the rules and protecting the regulations is binding oneself without rope.

Moving
freely vertically and horizontally without obstruction is the way of outsiders
and the nightmare army.

To
preserve the heart mind and to purify it by letting impurities settle to the
bottom in quiescence is the perverted Zen of silent
illumination.

Neglecting the written records
with unrestrained ideas is falling into a deep pit.

To be
awake and not ignorant is to wear chains and shoulder a cangue.

Thinking
good and thinking evil are the halls of heaven and hell.

A view
of Buddha and a view of Dharma are the two enclosing mountains of iron.

A
person who perceives thoughts as they immediately arise is fiddling with
spectral consciousness.

However, being on a
high plateau practicing samadhi is the stratagem of living in the house of
ghosts.

To
advance results in ignoring truth; to retreat results in contradicting the
lineage.

Neither to advance
nor to retreat is being a breathing corpse.

Just say, how will you walk?You must work hard to live in the present
and, to finish, all the more. I do not advise the unfortunate excess of
continual suffering.

Huanglong’s Three
Checkpoints

"How
is my hand like the hand of Buddha?"

Able
to touch the pillow at the back of my head,

I
unconsciously laughed a great laugh.[MM 64]

From the first, the hand is
throughout the body.

"How
is my leg like the leg of a donkey?"

Not
yet lifting a step, stepping along in time has manifested.

A single
assignment and the four seas are circumnavigated.

Straddle
backwards on the three legs of Yangqi.

"Everyone
exists by a particular cause of birth."

Each
and every one has the innate function of penetrating in-depth.

Nazha broke his bones to return them to his father.

Can it be that the Fifth
Ancestor relied on the cause of his
father?

The
hand of the Buddha, the leg of the donkey, and the cause of birth

Are
not Buddha, not the Way, not Zen.

It is not strange that the narrow pass of the
gateless checkpoint

Ties
up and exhausts the monks' deep animosity

Wumen recently was present at Ruiyan
(Lucky Cliff) mending the opposite parts of the rope-bench, judging past and
present, and cutting off everything at the trailhead of the worldly and the
sacred. Only a few who are curled up and hibernating will arouse the sound of
thunder.[MM65]Wumen was asked to be in the head-seat to set up a mountain
of monks.*To
thank him I respectfully offer these gathas.Written by WulaingZongshou(Measureless
Longevity of the Lineage) in the late spring of the 3rd terrestrial branch of the 7th celestial stem of
the Shaoding
era [1230
C.E.].

[*The
"head-seat to set up a monk's mountain" means to be the head monk establishing
the teaching period of the assembly of monks at a temple, which in Zen is
metaphorically called the mountain. The "mountain name" is the
commonly used name of a Zen master who gets known by the name of the temple
where he was Abbot for a substantial time.]

[Menggong’s untitled epilogue.]

Damo* came
from the West, not maintaining written words, but pointing directly to the
human heart-mind to see one's own nature to become Buddha.Speaking, in particular, about "pointing
directly" is already a twisted detour. Further, by saying "to become
Buddha," the gentleman doesn't stop flunking.Because it is already gateless, how can
there be a checkpoint?Like the friendly
feelings of an old woman, he announces and spreads hateful gossip.Wuan (Hermitage of
Nothing) wants to add one superfluous talk to become the forty-ninth criterion. In this space,
there are some
imprudent errors, so scrape the meat from the bones.Raise your eyebrows (to open your eyes
widely) and take hold of the offerings.

Republished in the summer of the 6th
Earthly Branch of the 2nd Heavenly Stem of theChunyouEra [1245 C.E.].

[MM66]

[Menggong’s untitled 49th case.]

A
little of a general's inspection protects the peace.The army of Wu ferried across the great lake
to pacify and establish governance.The
Ambassador-general** used militia labor to farm reclaimed wasteland.The path taken by the Ambassador-general
agreed with his strategy.The
Ambassador-general was familiar with JianglingPrefecture, a region to the east of the Han
River, in the State of Kai.Officially
it is a citystate with a livelihood of two thousand
one hundred households, [but has] a livelihood actually of around six hundred
households.

Epilogue by Menggong
(Great Bow)

[* Damo is the Chinese
transliteration of the Sanskrit dharma used as a nickname for Bodhidharma.

** Literally,
Double-posted Ambassador or Double-duty Ambassador meaning he had two official
assignments such as Ambassador and General. Menggong
was a warrior who rose in the ranks to become just such an Ambassador-General
or prefect, so it is likely he was speaking of himself.]

[Untitled introduction by Anwan to his 49th case.]

Zen's old Mumon
set up 48 standard talks to judge the koans of the virtuous ones of old.It greatly seems as if he is a man who sells
deep-fried cakes and orders the family of customers to open their mouths and
accept all of them.Furthermore,
like that, they are unable either to swallow or spit them up. Even if it is like that, it is Anwan's (Tranquil Sunset) desire to follow along with his
hot stove, again to boil up and fetch one more to be sufficient to become a
great overflow of quantity, yet before I deliver it, it appears I do not know [MM67]
at what place the old teacher (J. roshi) will
sink his teeth.If he is able to eat it in
one mouthful then he will release light rays and arouse the
earth.If he's not yet that like, then
he will see the 48, each and all, become burning
sand.Go on, say it quickly;
say it quickly.

Younger Brother's 49th Standard Talk:

The
Sutra said, "Stop, stop, one shouldn't explain. My Dharma is subtle and
difficult to conceive."

Anwan says:Whereof does Dharma come? Whereof does
subtlety exist?And now, what is produced
by setting up explanations?But how can
it be that Fenggan's (Vessel of Abundance) tongue
overflowed, when from the beginning Shakya (i.e., Shakyamuni Buddha) had much more mouth? That old boy
created demons, and because of his decrees hundreds of thousands of generations
of children and grandchildren are entwined in kudzu and canes and not even able
to stick out their heads. It seems like this kind of peculiar talk is a target;
but stirring with the spoon doesn't lift it and steaming in the rice pot
doesn't cook it.How many are there who
err in realizing the foundation?

A
person approached and asked, "Ultimately, when regarded thus, what knots
are severed?"

Anwan joined his ten fingernails and said, "Stop,
stop, one shouldn't explain. My [MM68]
Dharma is subtle and difficult to conceive."Still, above the two characters,
"difficult" and "to conceive," he quickly went and made the
image of a small circle and instructed the assembly, "The five thousand
scrolls of the Great Canon (Pitaka) and Vimalakirti'sgate of non-duality are all summed up within it
so."

The
Ode says:

At
the words "The fire is the lamplight,"

Turning
your head to walk away is not an answer.

Only
a thief recognizes a thief,

And attains a confession with one
question.

Layman
Anwan wrote this at the fishing villa on West Lake in
the fortunate beginning of the summer of the 7th
Earthly Branch of the 3rdHeavenly
Stem of the Chunyou (Genuine
Protection) Era [1246 C.E.].

The Wu-men kuan
The Formation, Propagation, and Characetistics of a
Classic Zen Koan TextI
hesitate to provide this link because I both disagree with some of the
translations in this essay and I think the interpretations it provides of koans
is rather silly, but it does offer an interesting look at how academics
approach the history of the Gateless Checkpoint, mixing important historical
data and biography of Wumen along side the mistaken
or superfluous speculative interpretations about koans.

One example
of the academic gone astray is the discussion of flowers in reference to Wumen's verse to Case 19 "Ordinary is the
Way."The first two lines are
"Spring has a hundred flowers; autumn has the moon; Summer has cool winds;
winter has the snow." Dogen wrote a similar
verse: "In the spring, cherry blossoms: in the summer, the cuckoo. In the autumn, the moon; in the winter, snow, clear, cold."
Since the Gateless Checkpoint was written after Dogen
returned to Japan
it is not likely that Dogen got his poem from Wumen. It is almost certain that both Wumen
and Dogen took as the source for their poems an
ancient but well known Chinese piece of literature.This type of unattributed use is so frequent
in the writings of the Zen masters one might say that plagiarism is a tradition
among Zen masters. Dogen simply adapted it to the
Japanese context of cherry blossoms and cuckoos. Wumen
uses it as the first two lines of his four line verse, probably with the
understanding that his readers would all recognize its source in the way
everyone today would recognize "To be or not to be, that is the
question" without having to acknowledge Shakespeare.

The
academic however, makes a great deal out of the difference between what kind of
flower is conjured up in the mind of the Japanese compared to the Chinese. He
says that when the image of a flower is presented the Japanese think of cherry
blossoms and the Chinese think of peach blossoms, so he concludes saying,
"It is more likely that Wumen would have been
thinking of peach blossoms."Completely forgotten by this kind of stale academic approach is the fact
that Wumen's verse says "a hundred flowers"
not just "flowers."The
academic ignores the relevance of the term "a hundred" as if it is
superfluous.

As a
concrete image, "a hundred flowers" refers to the variety of the
types of flowers, not to the number of flower blossoms on a tree or of a single
species of flower. The phrase "a hundred flowers" was a well-known
image to the Chinese. For instance, the phrase a "hundred flowers" is
also found in Case 24 "Abandon Language," another of the koans in the
Gateless Checkpoint but one that the academic seems to overlook.

Venerable Fengxue:
Because a monk asked, "Talking and silence wade across brightness and
subtlety.How should one be like to flow
unobstructed and not offend?"

Xue said, "I
long remember Jiangnan in the 3rd month,

The place
mountain quail cry,

The fragrance of a hundred flowers."

[My
translation]

FengxueYanzhao (Feng-hsueh Yen-chao, FuketsuEnsho), (896-973) -- who lived
roughly 300 years before Wumen and Dogen
--obviously knew the phrase.Here, the
fragrance of a hundred flowers in the place where the mountain quail cry
portrays an image of a wild meadow with a hundred different kinds of flowers
blooming with its bouquet of perfumes, not a peach tree or orchard.

The
"hundred flowers" is also found in a koan of the Zen master DeshanYuanming (known as "Yuanmi")(908-987) a
contemporary of Fengxue:

A
monk asked, "What is it before the hundred flowers bloom?"

Yuanmi said, "The Yellow River's turbid flow."

The
monk asked, "What about after they bloom?"

Yuanmi said, "The top of the flag pole points toward
the sky."

[Translation
from Zen's
Chinese Heritage, page 298.]

So from this we can see that 300 years before Wumen and Dogen used the phrase,
the image of "the hundred flowers" was well known in China as the
image of spring and the variety of flowers that bloom then. The academic, in
discussing whether the flower image conjures up cherry blossoms for the
Japanese or peach blossoms for the Chinese, entirely misses the Dharma point
that the image of a hundred flowers is a reference to the diversity of the
phenomenal differentiation of the Mind.The discussion of Case 38 is similarly flawed by the academic's point of
view.